The billionaires are consolidating their media, now so are we.

Billionaires are trying to control the news and content that we consume. Larry Ellison’s Oracle acquired TikTok. Elon Musk has turned X into a propaganda megaphone which deliberately silences progressive voices. Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post. Paramount and Warner Bros. are trying to merge their empires. And the Trump administration, never subtle, openly promotes a new constellation of far-right media outlets designed to drown out anything that challenges power. The pattern is unmistakable: the information landscape is being consolidated, bought, and weaponized – and working people are supposed to accept the result as news.

This is the media environment in which BreakThrough News and Peoples Dispatch have taken the bold step to join into a single, unified text and video outlet. To BT’s million-strong social media and YouTube following, we will now be doubling in size with the addition of Peoples Dispatch writers and correspondents working across five continents to deliver original on-the-ground reporting from the West Bank to India, Kenya to Ecuador.

The last few months have shown why our media institution is desperately needed. We were on the ground in Venezuela, Iran, and Lebanon during and after the lawless bombardments. We covered the uprising in Minneapolis from inside the general strike, and were the first to break the killing of immigrant rights activist Alex Pretti. We’ve been with the communities fighting the data centers in their backyards. We’ve embedded with the teachers going on strike in San Francisco against the Big Tech domination of their city. We’re interviewing people on the streets of Cuba every week about the new war threats. We are across the African continent, speaking directly to the activists and movements demanding an end to foreign military bases. In each of these places, we made the same choice: to find the people fighting back, and to tell their story in their own words.

BreakThrough News and Peoples Dispatch were built on the same conviction: that the majority of people in the world have no voice in the media that shapes their reality. The outlets that reach the most people are owned by the fewest. People who attend an anti-war rally, join a union, organize their neighbors, or resist an eviction do not see themselves on the news. When they do appear, they are background – statistics, chaos, grievance – not the subjects of their own history.

Both of our organizations were founded to reject that arrangement, to build something different: journalism that treats working people as protagonists, not problems. We believe in coverage that assumes readers and viewers want to understand the world, not just consume it. That requires going wherever the struggle is – not where the powerful stage their press conferences.

The case for coming together is not complicated. The corporate-controlled media has reconsolidated its control in the social media era. The billionaire class is pouring limitless resources into traditional and new media projects that don’t turn a profit. The best resourced political forces are paying influencers to appear “independent.” They know in this age of extreme inequality, their control over the narrative and the world of ideas becomes even more important. 

As a result, truly independent media is few and far between. And the need for accurate information, for movement coverage, for journalism that tells the truth about who is responsible for the crises bearing down on ordinary people – that has never been greater.

We have no illusions about how much work this will take. But we have no doubts about which side we are on. The world is in motion. We intend to cover it, and we hope you will join us.